Well, characteristically, there was another little kerfuffle amongst Grobanites this weekend. It's funny how often we seem to have these.
Twitter is a wonderful place to hang out and generate a tempest in a teapot. I guess I prefer that to watching TV and movies, because it's lower key. Most of what I see is text. Sometimes there is a link to a photo or video material, but typically that's short and also low key. It's not like going to a high drama, big screen movie, where you get sucked into an emotional roller coaster -- absorbed into the huge screen and surround sound. Still, with twitter, there is plenty of drama in the text, little 140 character segments of it.
One of my friends who lives in rural Kansas once said to me "Nothing much happens here, but you can't tell it from the way people talk." You could say that about us all chatting on twitter.
So Josh reacted with embarrassment to a video by Kathy Griffin, a female comedian, who alleged that he had made a crude comment including a vulgar reference to a body part, and in a way that might be interpreted as derogatory toward fans.
Now Josh has a great range of fans.
There are those of us who are older & middle aged women. Some of us were drawn to the younger Josh, who was almost a child performer when he started out -- and he seemed so sweet, innocent, sheltered, and sensitive. The fact that he is plainly a man now, a man who fairly drips with loss of innocence, is not necessarily happy-making for us.
My group likes to sit on twitter and chat.
But there are a lot of other fans -- males and youngsters, etc.
I guess the guys -- and some of the younger fans -- thought the crude comment was cute. People in my crowd did not. There was some discussion of whether such a sweet guy as Josh -- or as Josh seemed to be when he was singing with David Foster -- could possibly have said such a thing. Even more disturbing was the possibility that he might actually have been behaving the way that the joke implied he might have behaved.
I think he could have said this thing he is quoted as saying. No one is perfect. People say things, things they later might regret. It's hard for celebs, whose every word could easily be flashed around the globe, because poor speech judgments can really come back to bite them in ways that ordinary people have never experienced.
So the same day as we find out about the off-color video, in which Josh was quoted as saying something vulgar, there are allegations that Justin Bieber is smoking dope.
I find myself wondering which would be worse.
Both things -- drug use & casual sex -- could be potentially addictive & life destroying.
Bieber might be excused for immaturity. It's hard to say the same for Josh.
Josh has repeatedly made a point of saying that he doesn't have sex with fans, contrary to the implication of the crude remark. I have a sort of morbid imagination. I find myself wondering why he makes a point of that. Is it to discourage fans from getting too attached? Is it because he really has to struggle with himself to refrain from such activity? If the latter, it would be more concerning.
I guess I'm more upset about Bieber, because I got two of his discs for my niece, who is 12. I fear that, if his behavior goes off, it might inspire her to let her behavior go off.
I'm not so worried that Josh will have a bad influence on *me.* I think of myself as pretty well formed. Truth be told, though, I do have Giles de la Tourrette Syndrome with involuntary speaking. I don't get those symptoms often, but sometimes.
I've always been very grateful that I was raised in a home where no one ever engaged in vulgar speech. The worst that happened was that sometimes my mom said "Damn," when she hurt herself, like banging her head on an open cabinet door. I feel that, if I had been frequently exposed to obscenity, this involuntary speaking might have turned into copralalia (involuntary use of obscenity), which can be quite disabling.
I sometimes wonder if I keep getting exposed to so much vulgar speech I might start in on that. It's nice that some of this stuff is still getting bleeped out, though people seem to be less tolerant of the fact that things get bleeped out than they used to be -- and more anxious to use that language.
So if Josh gets too vulgar it *could* influence me in ways I might not like, even though I am 56. I hope he won't go that way.
I have several times speculated that the atmosphere in pop music concerts is a pheromone soup. Musicians are notoriously promiscuous. I wonder if Josh is showing the signs of having his head slowly simmered in pheromones
